Eighteenth-century Manipulative Advertising

A few days ago, I was reading old eighteenth-century newspapers on microfilm. Literary scholars aren't just supposed to write on "the major text," but to situate it within its broader historical context so you can understand what the major author is responding to. Sometimes, you can hit the jackpot: I was writing a chapter on a novel's response to French Catholicism, and I discovered (from reading contemporary English newspapers) a huge debate on French Catholicism going on at the same time! However, you can also not hit the jackpot, and feel like you have spent a day in the library with nothing to show for it. In order not to feel like I have completely wasted my time, I have decided to blog about the most interesting part of the newspapers--the advertisements.

Newspapers tend not to print the same articles over again. The same cannot be said about their printing of advertisements. Much as our own culture has certain infectious phrases like "Where's the beef?" or "He likes it! Hey Mikey," so too does 18th century culture, such as "WORMS Brought Away ALIVE in the Close-Stool, by Famous little Purging SUGAR PLUMS, 12 d. a dozen." There is even an accompanying little sketch of worms above the advertisement, so you could have a mental image of exactly what was being purged. Even if the 18th century had no tv personality or catchy voiceovers, they did have other printing tricks to get the phrases into your head. It's fun to picture the Sugar plum guy going to an advertising firm and saying, "No, this advertisement just doesn't grab me, I want to see more italics and letters being capitalized."

Perhaps the most manipulative advertisement I discovered in my research was the following on "TOOTHING Children": "A Mother would Never Forgive Herself, Whose Child should DIE purely for Want of so EASY, and so very CHEAP a Thing, Presently to EASE it, and bring it's TEETH Out, as the Little Cordial Pleasant Thing is, to Rub only it's Gums with." Admittedly, this is rather convoluted sentence structure, so I don't know if the typical 18th century consumer could recite the whole sentence from memory. But would he or she really need to? So long as you get the idea that a mother would never forgive herself if her child should DIE because she hasn't bought your product, that's enough. Frankly, this is much more attention-grabbing than the present-day boring advertisements for organ donation, where the cheerful dad says, "Just in case something ever happens to me, champ, I want my organs to help someone else, and maybe that person will like fishing." It would be cooler if the father said something like, "Frankly, champ, if I DIE, I would Never Forgive Myself if I were Contributing to ANOTHER PERSON'S DEATH and behaving like a HeartLESS Slob!"

In 21st century advertising, advertisers sometimes pick a time slot that will target an audience already interested in their product. For instance, an advertisement for Tuck Everlasting (starring an actress from the Gilmore Girls) will be advertised on, surprise, surprise, Gilmore Girls. So too, the teeth advertisement occurs in a newspaper in which people are already attentive to its message. This particular newspaper printed the mortality rate weekly, recounting that, in 31 cases that week, people had died of: teeth. (I don't know what it means to "die of teeth," but evidently, it is more common than you'd think.) It's kind of like a tag-team between the newspaper article and the advertisement: the article says, "Okay, I'll tell them that 31 people died of teeth, then you tell them it could be their babies!"

Despite 18th century advertisers' strengths in capitalization and italics, they had some weaknesses we don't see in modern-day advertising. For instance, consider this advertisement: "SHORT WRITING, Easy, and Useful for EVERY BODY, to Write Any Thing, in Infinite LESS TIME, than By Common Writing. By TWO Principles, which do, so in an INSTANT, Do it, That a great Deal of Time, and Trouble in Writing, is Saved by it." By two questions, which do, so in an INSTANT, ask, what the freak are you trying to say? Who in the world thought it would be a good idea to advertise short, presumably clear writing with writing which was itself unintelligible and circumlocutionary? Now, in the past, I have felt like chiding 21st century advertisers for using the word "lay" wrong or choosing the wrong form of "its," but after reading 18th century advertising, I am impressed by just how much our sentences make sense. It kind of puts the grammatical horrors of text-messaging into better perspective.